Our summer home is near where we grew up: each summer here includes visits to and talk about the local restaurant scene. The chefs here are people we’ve known and enjoyed: they work hard to maintain their hard-earned reputations. They’ve created a few ‘local’ dishes that seem to stand out: Utica Riggies(a dish usually consisting of chicken, rigatoni and hot or sweet peppers in a spicy cream and tomato sauce) and Utica Greens(a hearty dish of escarole, fried prosciutto, cherry peppers, Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, bread crumbs, and spices). I hadn’t thought much about the notoriety of these until I walked into a restaurant in Taos, New Mexico last year and saw them on a menu: owned by two guys from Utica who’d moved there and were following a tradition. So, I tried them and, ‘lo and behold’ (as my grandmother used to say), they were both good: these guys were living on a reputation of the reputations of others. We’re all responsible for the things that define us: begin to build your reputation today.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809 – 1894): American physician, poet, and polymath
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